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The literature on ‘mixed’ families (in which members are socially viewed as ‘different’ due to their varying ethnicities and/or nationalities) identifies several stakes of mixedness. One of them arises from childbirth, after which parents need to give name(s) to their offspring. How does the parent–child dyad understand the giving of names in their mixed family? What does naming children unveil regarding interpersonal interactions and the value of children within this social unit? The chapter delves into these questions through a case study of forenaming children in Filipino-Belgian families in Belgium. Interview data analysis reveals two modes of forenaming in these families: individualisation through single forenames and reinforcement of collective affiliation through compound forenames. Through the analytical framework of social relatedness, this chapter uncovers the way the act of naming a child bridges families based on biological and social ties, generations, and parents' nations of belonging in their transnational spaces. The complex process of naming reflects the power dynamics not only within the parental couple but also within the wider set of social relations. Although the use of forename(s) in everyday life and in legal terms differ, the value of children in the mixed families studied lies in their symbolic role as social bridges linking generations and non-biological relationships, the then and now, and the here and there.

In transnational families worldwide, different family members have varying degrees of mobility, as well as different physical and emotional experiences with relatives and places throughout their lives. For this reason, in recent decades, increasing attention has been placed upon the experiences of migrants' descendants growing up across borders.

Based on data from a multi-sited ethnography and a survey, this chapter explores the experiences of children growing up in Chinese transnational families split between Zhejiang province and their parents' immigration countries, located mainly in Europe. First, it introduces the migration context and methods, presenting the profiles and basic information of the 77 Chinese migrants' descendants who participated in a ‘Roots-seeking Journey’ summer camp held in their family area of origin in China, in 2018. Second, it explores their heterogeneous early childhood paths and conditions, paying particular attention to mobility, care strategies, intergenerational relations and transnational ties. Finally, this chapter introduces the concept of fluid childhoods, and reflects on the key role of care-related mobility and communication technologies in shaping their early life paths and experiences as well as further transnational engagement.

Thailand has seen waves of youth-led protests over the past three years. Pro-democracy youth activists have vociferously criticised authority figures: teachers, parents and political leaders, especially the king. Drawing on vignettes assembled over a 14-year ethnographic work with young people in Thailand, as well as on current research on youth (online and offline) activism in Bangkok, I examine the multi-layered meaning of kinship in Thai society. The chapter reveals the political nature of childhood and parenthood as entangled modes of governance that come into being with other, both local and international cultural entities. I argue that Thai youth activists are attempting to rework dominant tropes that sustain “age-patriarchy” in the Buddhist kingdom. Their “engaged siblinghood” aims to reframe Thailand's generational order, refuting the moral principles that establish citizens' political subordination to monarchical paternalism and, relatedly, children's unquestionable respect to parents. As I show, Thai youth activists are doing so by engaging creatively with transnational discourses such as “democracy” and “children's rights,” while simultaneously drawing on K-pop icons, Japanese manga and Buddhist astrology. In articulating their dissent, these youths are thus bearers of a “bottom-up cosmopolitanism” that channels culturally hybrid, and politically subversive notions of childhood and citizenship in Southeast Asia's cyberspace and beyond. Whatever the outcome of their commitment, Thai youth activism signals the cultural disarticulation of the mytheme of the Father in Thailand, as well as the growing political influence of younger generations in the region.

This research aims to explore childhood construction in the Afghan refugee community living in Pakistan. Young Afghan people aged 12–18 who were working on the streets participated in the generation of data for this study in 2019. Ethnographic research approaches with semi-structured in-depth interviews and field observations were used to obtain real insights. Young Afghan refugees have been a constant phenomenon on the streets for decades in the twin cities of Pakistan – Rawalpindi and Islamabad – where this research was conducted and are involved in different street-based casual activities. The findings show that young people face discrimination and exclusion from the mainstream of society due to their undefined citizenship status and poverty. Parents see their children as dependents and as assets for their old age, and children and young people need to work to support their families who live in poverty. In fulfilling their filial responsibilities, young people sacrifice their schooling and have limited opportunities to learn new skills. It is concluded that the government and other international institutions with responsibility for setting policies and creating programs for young Afghan refugees need to understand the dynamics of the families in which the young people live and how these families inculcate them with their generational values.

The present chapter explicates urban and rural childhoods in India. It presents childhood as a dynamic product arising out of an intersection of children's experiences in different familial–socio-cultural contexts, and children's positions within parent–child interactions and relations. These contexts and interactions tend to colour and shape the childhoods that children inhabit. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in urban and rural India, the chapter documents (1) nature of children's engagements and (2) parent–child relations, explicitly observed in parent–child interactions, provisioning warmth and care; parental control and supervision over children and children's participation in the overall fabric of family life and so forth. Forty-eight parents (24 urban and 24 rural) of children aged 7–11 years participated in the study. Qualitative data gathered through semi-structured interviews and home observations revealed distinctions in urban and rural Indian childhoods. Urban childhood is characterised by rights and privileges, and the centrality of academic pursuits, while rural childhood is featured with subtle induction into economic and social fabric of rural life. Although the world of ‘Indian childhood’ seemed plural, childhood playfulness and learning seemed to be the unifying themes. Geared to the fact that children have to make a living with limited means in the future, both childhoods were accelerated in preparation for future. Dwelling on the complexities in children's lives, this article appreciates diversity and multiplicity in childhoods.

When discussing the term “technology-facilitated violence” (TFV) it is often asked: “Is it actually violence?” While international human rights standards, such as the United Nations' Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (United Nations General Assembly, 1979), have long recognized emotional and psychological abuse as forms of violence, including many forms of technology-facilitated abuse (United Nations, 2018), law makers and the general public continue to grapple with the question of whether certain harmful technology-facilitated behaviors are actually forms of violence. This chapter explores this question in two parts. First, it reviews three theoretical concepts of violence and examines how these concepts apply to technology-facilitated behaviors. In doing so, this chapter aims to demonstrate how some harmful technology-facilitated behaviors fit under the greater conceptual umbrella of violence. Second, it examines two recent cases, one from the British Columbia Court of Appeal (BCCA) in Canada and a Romanian case from the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), that received attention for their legal determinations on whether to define harmful technology-facilitated behaviors as forms of violence or not. This chapter concludes with observations on why we should conceptualize certain technology-facilitated behaviors as forms of violence.

This paper describes the parent–child relationships of upper-middle-class Chinese parents and their adolescent children who were “parachuted” to the United States for private high schools. With parents remaining in China and children in the United States, thousands of miles away, such a transnational educational arrangement complicates the already volatile parent–child relationships during the adolescent years. Through ethnographic interviews of 41 students and 33 parents, I demonstrate different forms of child–parent relationships in a transnational education setting: those who found that the further physical and temporal distance has brought the parent–child relationship closer through frequent communications, children who experienced “accelerated growth” yet questioned the necessity, and delicate parent–child relationships due to increasing transnational cross-cultural or intergenerational differences. These types of parent–child relationships are not comprehensive of all the lived experiences of the “parachute generation,” yet they shed new light on transnational education and the unintended emotional dimensions of educational migration. In a transnational context for an economically well-off group, parental absence or separation of children and parents is no longer a clear-cut concept and has different layers of meanings, taking into account the frequency of communication, duration of spring and winter breaks and the existence of third-party agents such as for-profit intermediaries (or educational consultants) and host families. The diverse patterns of parent–child relations reveal the heterogeneity and complexities of “doing family” across geographic spaces and global educational hierarchies, as well as the roles of communication technologies, the tempo of mobilities and educational intermediaries.